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Kathryn Heyman is the author of four novels, including The Accomplice and Captain Starlight’s Apprentice, published internationally and in translation. She has received an Arts Council of England Writers Award, the Wingate and the Southern Arts Awards, and been nominated for the Orange Prize, the Scottish Writer of the Year Award, the Edinburgh Fringe Critic’s Awards, the Kibble Prize and the West Australian Premier’s Book Awards. She has written several radio plays for BBC radio, including adaptations of her own work. Her fifth novel, The Floodline, will be published in 2013.
More information at www.kathrynheyman.com
HOUSE of BOOKS
KATHRYN HETYMAN
The Breaking
This edition published by Allen & Unwin House of Books in 2012
First published by Phoenix, London in 1997
Copyright © Kathryn Heyman 1997
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
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ISBN 978 1 74331 494 4 (pbk)
ISBN 978 1 74343 199 3 (ebook)
To my family, especially my mother, with love
Also, in love and memory of my father
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Two
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Acknowledgements
The main road of Boolaroo begins and ends at the primary school – depending on which way you’re walking. Or driving. Walk or drive it doesn’t make any difference, you still have to hit the primary school at one end or the other. Now, this is assuming you’re going to cover the whole road. You might stop half-way, you might be calling in to see someone, or to pick up some dog food from Fur Fin and Feather and then you might turn around and go back just the way you came. Let’s assume you aren’t going to do that though, because you want to know. About this place, this school, that little square police station you passed, the horses in the paddocks, the glass-fronted Catholic church with the red-brick convent, that yellow and white pub, The Penny’s Head.
Sarah Sweet was one of the swarm of blue-checked small-bodied girls dribbling out of the Boolaroo school, with its cracked yellow paint. Sarah came out of Mrs Hallows’ room. She was called Mrs Hallows because she was a Hallowe’en witch, she kept her broomstick in her Beetle car, everyone knew it was true. The school was two buildings, both verandahed and yellow-painted, with big high-ceilinged rooms. The bell-ringing, for school lunchtime, was taken in turns.
On the day it was rung by Sarah Sweet, her feet lifting off the wooden daïs, the rope reddened her hands to the point of bleeding, she gripped so hard. Sliding up and down the savage edges of the rope, her hands clenching, fists tight and tight and tight. It was the rawness, the tearing away, the sanding down of skin so hard it was like prayer. She rang, she rang, she swang from the bell, hands sliding, roughing, scratching. Feeling herself rubbed away. The bell was meant to be rung four times. On the Wednesday Sarah rang, the sound called through the high wooden shed-like rooms, six, seven, eleven, twenty-four, thirty-two, forty-three times.
Her hands bled when she was stopped by Mr Cartwright, the fat, red-faced head teacher and her eyes stared over his shoulder at a place far away. He scalded her hands with Dettol and bandaged them carefully. ‘Did you forget? About the bell ringing four times? Where were you Sarah, you must be careful mustn’t you, you’re not like your sister, don’t pretend to be, you might get yourself into trouble. Okay? Go home and rest now, fresh for tomorrow.’
Sarah was still silent, slowly letting her eyes draw in on Mr Cartwright, kneeling at her feet with a red plastic bucket filled with warm frothy diluted Dettol. She rubbed the bandages against her legs, repeated the mantra carefully: I’m not like my sister, I’m not like my sister.
Kari Sweet, sister of Sarah, daughter of Mal, did not wear a bluecheck uniform. She wore any clothes she liked, special clothes, her special favourite and best Chinese-girl suit, yellow hot pants – all sorts – with her big heavy calliper boots and big thick glasses. Special clothes. Special school. Kari (called The Spastic by Sarah Sweet) was a girl at the special school. One special amongst lots of other specials there. In the mornings before breakfast Sarah sat on Kari and farted joyfully calling ‘I’m farting on the spastic’s head. Farty farty spastic.’ Kari squealed with laughter and then cried when Sarah bit her finger so hard she left marks in the skin, solid, good indents, like in chocolate. Later, Sarah bit the arm of Michael Maley who’d said, ‘hey what’s it like to have a spas for a sister?’
Spitting out his skin, Sarah said ‘she’s not a spastic you’re a bloody spastic she just can’t walk properly and her eyes are funny and she can think and talk just like you only not so stupid.’ She yelled out that bit, the last word, Stupid, and her mouth dived for his arm again. Oh, but it felt good, to push teeth together over someone’s skin, grinding almost to the bone sometimes, she would bite so hard she could be so tough so strong. She was Sarah Sweet, biter of flesh, defender of spastics.
Kari Sweet came home on the special bus, clinking and clumping in her callipers. Sarah Sweet walked the walk down the main street of Boolaroo, past the corner-store, past the red-brick doctor’s room with its brown mesh-and-steel fly-wire door and the black pegboard at the front, with DOCTOR marked out in white plastic stick-on letters, past the brown square post office. Past the Catholic church, too, where Ruth Sweet, mother of Kari, mother of Sarah, wife of Mal, had once gone to find refuge. The priest (a pink skinny one with dandruff on his frock) told her to return to her husband and God would forgive her rebellion. Spitting powerlessness, Ruth Sweet pelted a rock at the dandruff-covered back. Ha. Still, it seemed easier to go back after that.
Just past the church, and on the other side of the road, was a brick house. Number Four, Main Road, Boolaroo. A flat squat square of a shape, with front and back verandah to climb up to and to jump from. There were patches of green and brown all around the square red house. Big, paddock-sized patches. On one patch, the patch next to the house, was the police station, not even separated by a gate or a fence. ‘We own the police station, my dad is the boss of the police and nooligans’ – this was Kari, at special school. On the patch behind the house was a white wooden prison. There were bars on the high windows (no glass, just air) and a solid metal door, with locks and locks and locks. Everything, you see. A real prison. A cell really. The wood was dark on the inside, there was no heating or cooling. Outside, there were six steps leading to the little veranda, leading to the door. Sarah stepped on to the steps, holding her bandages against herself.
A voice trickled out of the barred prison door: ‘“Be thou my vision, o Lord of my heart.”’ It slurred and dribbled, then eased off into a laugh. And again ‘“save that thou art, dum da da ruler of all.”’
Jasmine climbed around the walls of the lock-up; the scent played in the dreams of Sarah (here comes the jasmine lady on a mat of pearls), and sometimes the sound of this singing, these slurred hymns squeezing out through the lock-up bars, was in her dreams as well. ‘Amazing Grace’. ‘There is a Green Hill’. These were the favourites, forced past a cheese sandwich in the throat of Jack Fir. Sometimes Sarah stepped right up to the door of the lock-up and held his small small finger through the barred window. ‘I feel much better now, I feel myself now.’ His finger shook inside her fist.
Jack Fir – born somewhere near Nundle, sometime around 1920, though there was no birth certificate or other record of his existence. There was only his own word to go on as proof that he had ever been born at all. Arrested regularly for: vagrancy, trespass, disorderly behaviour, offensive language. Mal Sweet picked him up every Tuesday and Friday night – usually outside The Penny’s Head, the green-carpeted Boolaroo pub, which smelt of vomit and Fosters. On Wednesday and Saturday mornings Jack would sit at the small brown table inside the dark lock-up, eating Heinz baked beans, sausages and four slices of toast with margarine (butter was kept in a dish inside the house, not for the prisoners). Monday nights he spent at the hospital. Wednesdays at the convent across the road, Saturday nights on the back porch of the school (two bottles of milk left out for him and a stale Lamington left by the canteen ladies). On Sundays he walked nine miles to the big Anglican church in Marmong. He ate his food too fast, trying to swallow and drink and sing at the same time. Three times Mal Sweet had opened the door of the lock-up to find Jack Fir hunched on the floor, his back in spasm, his face purpling up. Mal Sweet would slap him like a horse and call Ruth to clean up the neat little gob of toast which flew in a perfect ball from Jack’s mouth and landed on the wooden floor of the lock-up.
Sarah Sweet’s bandaged hand wrapped itself around Jack Fir’s finger, while he sang’ “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty”’ and pressed his monkey-sized face to the bars. He sang to her and she sang back at him ‘Mr Cartwright is a fat red smelly penguin Lisa Tredley ran to the toilet with her pants pulled down four times four is sixteen I hate my sister do you?’ and they formed a harmony.
Sarah’s wrapped-up hand was bleeding again, red began to seep through the white roughness of the bandage. Jack’s song stopped–not in a trickle this time, but in a sudden shock of a stop. Sarah opened her hand and the monkey face through the bars stared with her at the clothed-up palm, striped red. ‘I hurt myself, I was bleeding,’ she looked back to his face. He nodded, waiting for more, but a wave of fury overtook Sarah Sweet and she snatched her hand away. ‘Stupid old horrible leave me alone I’m dobbing and anyway you’re too ugly to be married.’ She saw his face become smaller, creased up, behind the bars while she reversed up the stairs to the back door. ‘Stupid horrible ugly,’ she called, while Jack Fir’s face became more and more bunched up, his head retreating into his neck.
She used both fists to hit on the wooden door for her mother to open. Ruth looked small and crumpled when the door swung back. She had skin-coloured pantyhose on with blue shiny slippers. Black hairs flocked together inside the brown nylon of the pantyhose. Sarah told the black hairs, ‘I got an early mark.’ She held her bandaged hand behind her back and crabbed herself past Ruth, into the lounge. I am not like my sister, I am not like my sister. The words did not sing like before, but trudged through Sarah’s brain, necessary visitors.
Bill and Ben, Flowerpot Men grew and mumbled on the television in the corner, their faces shades of grey and white and black and fuzziness. Sarah sat on her hand, feeling the rawness. Now and then, she pushed the nails of her unbled hand into the bandages, or her fist, punching the place where the skin had come away, punching until to not cry was something that only she, Sarah Sweet, could do. Kari would have cried. Ruth would have cried, that mother cried all the time. Only Sarah and Mal could be the not-hurting ones.
At four o’clock, Mal pulled the big heavy bunch of keys from his belt and pushed the lock-up door back. ‘Orright then Jack, take care, keep off the streets.’ Jack scuffled past and out the door, picked a stem of jasmine in his stumpy hand and banged the door of the Boolaroo house. When Ruth opened it, smiling above her nylon tights, he handed her the stem, said ‘thank you very much lady,’ and disappeared from Boolaroo for five weeks.
Jack came back the same week that Fosters the cat had kittens and they found starlings in the roof. Jack was joyously arrested on Tuesday night, fed with an omelette, sausages, toast and two kinds of jam for breakfast. Kari carefully carved a basket from an orange, with a glacé cherry on top. Ruth put it on Jack’s tray, with a white cloth and butter and family spoons. At playtime Sarah told Mrs White, the canteen lady with the wet marks under her arms, that Jack was back. On Friday night, the canteen ladies left half a box of Lamingtons and fairy cakes on the back porch. Jack saved three fairy cakes and left them on the back step of the Boolaroo house on Sunday morning, along with a half-dead Waratah flower from the front garden.
Kari heard the starlings first; the scratching in the roof happened loudest above her bed. She noticed them on Thursday morning. ‘There’s angels in the roof, Daddy.’
Mal pulled the high wooden ladder upstairs onto the dark landing, beneath the manhole. Sarah held the ladder fiercely while Mal slid the white trapdoor across and pulled himself up and through the hole, into the blackness of the ceiling. Sarah held her breath and said the whole times table three times in her head waiting for him. Twelve times ten is one hundred and twenty, twelve elevens are one hundred and thirty-two. Mal reappeared with blood on his hands and a flushed-up face. His eyes were sparky hard and his voice was loud loud loud. ‘They’re pests, they’re no good to anyone, starlings.’
Sarah helped her father put the hessian bag of strangled starlings in the outside big metal bin. That was Thursday. On Sunday, Fosters had kittens. Kari, who always fed and stroked the grey cat, had watched her grow big and nippled. Sarah Sweet had no time for sooky cats, like girls and spastics. Ruth, absorbed in teatowels and hair-sets and casseroles, noticed the cat only if hairs were left in the kitchen. Mal noticed only horses.
Fosters was huddled in the wardrobe Kari shared with Sarah. Slime and blood dribbled on the clothes of Sarah and Kari, which had dropped down from their wire hangers. Fosters had found a solid pile of hotpants and tunics and dug herself in. When Kari opened the sliding door (chipboard, with a fake walnut-wood Laminex panel), Fosters looked up, startled and howling, biting on a pink worm coming from her own belly. Four small cases of shine and slime clustered around the pink worm and the warm belly. Small they were, smaller than Kari’s hand, and slits where eyes should be, but too little to open. No hair, just shine. And more were coming, that was the thing. Fosters’ claws dug into the clothes, her eyes and mouth widening as her catbody convulsed. Three more, before she breathed out like a sigh and licked and pawed the sad bundles. Kittens. ‘Kittens on my clothes,’ Kari rattled and clinked through the Boolaroo house, calling Sarah to come and see. Sarah pushed Kari out of the way; blood, blood on everything. ‘She’s bleeeeeeding,’ Sarah was like a bell tolling through the quiet of the house. They were piled up, an exhausted bundle, seven silver-slimed kittens and Fosters’ striped panting body. Occasionally, one of her claws tucked itself out and in.
‘Shush, quiet, we’ll put them in a box before your father gets home’, Ruth moved through the crowd of two with a white Bartletts shoe-box, the one which had held Sarah’s black school shoes with lion prints on the sole.
They were careful in the loading of the small parcels in to the box, lined with bits of old undies from the rag closet. Ruth tore the box open at one end, for Fosters to lie next to and let the pink blobs climb to her still swollen nipples. All were tucked up at the end of the wardrobe, the door left a teensy teensy fraction open, for air and light to just dribble in. It was a secret.
*
Kari, tucked up tight with the secret, kicked her legs at dinner. She drew patterns in the mashed potato on her plate, pictures of two circles on top of each other, with whiskers and tails. Stupid stupid stupid – the song in Sarah’s head had changed, and she kicked at Kari’s callipers beneath the Laminex table. Kari looked happy and bewildered, singing to herself beneath her breath. Mal knew nothing about the secret. He ate mostly in silence, sucking his teeth ferociously and telling Sarah, ‘eat it up, eat it all up.’ This was the dinnertime song. Sarah thought about little starving children and swallowed, thought how she would turn into a nigger girl if she wasn’t civilised with her knife and fork, thought about the little slimy pillows bleeding on her best yellow skirt, nearly gagged on her lamb chop. Kari sang, ‘Five little kittens have lost their mittens, they don’t know where to find them.’
At bedtime, Mal dusted Kari in Johnson’s Baby Powder and helped her into pink flannelette pyjamas, laid her callipers carefully by her bunk, said, ‘Prayers now, Blossom.’ He helped her to kneel, holding her beneath the arms and lowering her down. He sat on the bunk, helped her begin: ‘“Little jesus meek and mild, look upon this little child, now I lay me down to sleep I pray thee Lord my soul to keep.”’
Mal sat silent then, letting Kari do the Godblesses on her own. The Godblesses were a kind of way of saying ‘I love’. ‘I love Mummy, I love Daddy.’ It was like saying ‘Atishoo’ for sneezes, you just said it or you had bad luck. If you missed anybody out in the Godblesses, they would have very bad luck and probably die. ‘Godbless Mummy, Godbless Daddy, Godbless Sarah, Godbless Miss Pound, Godbless the horses, Godbless everybody in the whole world.’ Kari stopped, breathing hard, trying to whisper the secret into her hands, to save the kittens from the bad luck of not getting a godbless. ‘Godbless Fosters and her babies.’
She said it quickly, and though a soft thumping came from behind the sliding door, Mal was calm and soft, said ‘go to sleep now, my Blossom,’ and kissed her goodnight. Sarah, waiting outside the door for her turn to say prayers with Mal spat inside her head at Kari the stupid spastic big mouth can’t keep a secret spastic. Bloody bloody. Mal stepped out through the door and let his hand ruffle about in Sarah’s hair. ‘In bed now mate, garn.
No mention of prayers. Sarah took three big jumps to her bed, playing the if-your-feet-only-touch-the-floor-three-times-it-will-be-all-right game. The light clicked off and Sarah hung her head over the edge of the bunk, staring at Kari’s callipers lined upon the floor. Fear and knowing and mad all tumbling around inside her. ‘Da-aad,’ Sarah’s voice called after him and the door swung open again. Mal’s face popped in and out of the darkness; he was like a dream. Sarah let her eyes see the dream, a disappearing shadow. She told it: ‘Kari saw Fosters have kittens she hid them in the wardrobe I didn’t know.’ The door closed and there was the dull thump of Mal’s feet on the hall floor.
They were gone in the morning. The kittens, the box, the undies, nothing was left in the wardrobe except neatly hung hotpants and dresses. All the shoes were piled up at one end of the wardrobe – Sarah’s gym-boots and school shoes all mixed up with Kari’s special shoes. In the kitchen, Ruth was bright like a moon, ‘toast or Froot-loops, toast or Froot-loops?’ talking quickly and putting things on the table, concentrating hard. ‘Get dressed for school quickly, blue clips or pink, Kari? Sarah, put long socks on please, quickly quickly.’
Sarah could walk to school on her own. Ruth walked with Kari to the bus stop on the main road, waited until the yellow bus full of yelling and laughing arrived. Sarah let herself out through the back door. She could see Mal in the far bit of the back yard, way down near the paddock. His back was bare, brown as brown in the sun, while he piled bits of tree and kindling wood onto a big bonfire pile, like for cracker night. Sarah sucked her breath in, held her tummy in tight and ran to the gate on tippy toes.
All day at school she felt bits of sick rising and falling in her mouth. She hid her face in bits of paper and stayed in to colour in her Cars and Trains project at playtime, playing with the burn of shame, her head feeling like a merry-go-round. People’s voices seemed to come from far, far away. She could hear the sea in her ears.
There was the dry dead smell of fire in the afternoon when Sarah walked home. She smelt it before she even reached the gate of the Boolaroo house, left-over smoke clogging her nostrils. There was a big dead black place in the yard, near the paddock. Sarah sucked the smell in to herself, willing the sick to rise up, daring the dizziness to just try it. She watched her feet moving one after the other, closer and closer to the black charred circle. The grass around the black circle had turned brown, the way it did at the heat of Christmas when everything was born. Grey ashes had floated about, settling on the cement path, the paddock fence, the green grass as well as the brown. There was an unburnt bit of wood, only grey from the fire, not black and ashy, and seven black shapes, little corpse-parcels with crooked necks.
Sarah could see the tiny ears and the slits for eyes. They were black and hard and still shiny, but like melted plastic now. Sarah picked them up, one at a time, and placed them on the outer rim of the circle. She dragged her foot in a figure of eight, making a smooth track in the ashes, and knelt down, ramming the black bodies against each other. Ram, crash, crack. Dodgem Kittens. Sarah made the sounds of cars playing a knock-out comp. When one Dodgem Kitten got hit, she chucked it into the centre of the circle. ‘Out!’ She was driver, dodger and commentator. The kittens did nothing but leave black marks on her hand and they didn’t skid well, having no wheels. Sarah kicked them into a pile, their twisted necks all poking over each other, and banged on the back door.
Ruth was in the laundry, pushing a line of Mal’s police shirts through the wringer with one hand. Sarah watched above the loud rumble of the machine. Ruth pulled the blue shirts from the washer, fat and alive with water, and fed them one by one through the squeeze of the wringer. Like two rolling pins stuck together. Squeeeeeze, squeeeeeeze. Sarah fed the wringer words it did not want. The shirts flattened, grew lifeless, flopped onto the other side of the metal tub, where Ruth quickly pushed them into a wooden basket. Both her hands worked at the same time, one pulling a dead shirt off the wringer, one feeding a live shirt through. When Ruth looked down, Sarah could see a blue, black and purple mark on her cheek. When the wringer stopped, the laundry was shocking in its silence.
Mal was bright again that night, his face all gleaming and shining like before, with the starlings. Thwacking Sarah and calling her his little mate, ay? His mate. Kari sat still all through dinner and did not play with her food. No-one mentioned the kittens.
‘They’re ya mates, horses, don’t let em smell fear, give em a strong hand and they’re mates.’ Mal held the end of a lasso in one hand, holding it lightly, like air. A new mare was on the end of the lasso, stretching like a crossbow and kicking her hooves.
‘Like women ey Mal?’ Frank Johnson, ‘Johnno’, sat on the white-and-black wood fence. The fence that Mal built. Johnno was a roll-bellied man with tattoos on his back and arms and a can in his hand.
Sarah put a finger on the picture of a red dragon on Johnno’s arm. ‘Where’d ya get the pictures from. You’ve got em on ya back, didya know?’
Johnno rippled his fat, so that the undressed lady on his side thrust herself up and down, while Johnno went ‘uh, uh, uh.’ He looked at Mal, ready to laugh with him, but Mal Sweet was wooer and breaker of horses, with his hand gentle on the lasso and soft sounds coming from his mouth and his eyes all liquid at the gold-bay mare.
‘Why?’ Sarah tapped again at Johnno’s back, letting Mal whisper to the mare in the sun of the paddock.
Johnno bulged his arm muscles up, looked down at Sarah, said ‘some kids up the track needed a blackboard and I said they could have a borrer of me. Not bad scribblers, whaddaya reckon?’
Sarah rubbed her fingers on the undressed lady, watching her jump up and down. ‘Uh, uh, uh.’
Johnno’s eyes were on her and she felt tight inside. ‘Children scribbled on Johnno, Dad,’ she called across the paddock, in her loud voice, and the mare’s eyes fired up, spit foamed at her mouth.
Mal’s voice was flat as the paddock. ‘If ya can’t be friggin quiet like a bloke, don’t flamin well come out.’
Sarah swallowed her words way back in her mouth and just let breathing be there instead.
At the Boolaroo school, playtimes were for games of Breaking. Sarah used the sash from her sports tunic as a lasso and took turns with Peter Clarke and Ian Mackintosh (Macka) being the horse. All mad and fierce one minute, then soft and quiet like a weak girl the next. They tried to catch each other out, begin by talking low and silky to the horse, then suddenly jump on its back going ‘Heeya Heeya’. The washroom was home and if you touched home, you were safe. Sarah could let her voice out in a big loud yell, or a scream, or a neigh at those times, yes sir. She wanted to tell Johnno this, that she could yell as loud as she liked at the Boolaroo school and no-one even said shut up get out of my way. But Johnno was waving his dragons in the sun, staring hard at Mal in the paddock.
There was always a man there, on the paddock fence, watching Mal do the breaking. Mal was good. Talking down in his throat, making the horses trust him, but hard with them, like they would know. Who was the strong one, the not-afraid one, they would know that for sure. Men came from Teralba, Booragul, the Point, all around, for Mal to break their horses. Other times on the fence were: Crocka (Bill Crockle), Whitey (Allan White), Rollo (Ivan Rollinson), Smithy (Bob Smith), Wog (Sam Luciano, whose grandparents had once been Italian), Mad Mick Riley and Davo (Mick Smith), watching Mal break their horses. All the horses round – Booragul, Marmong, Cockle Creek, the Point – they were all broken by Mal. You could ask anybody, they’d tell you, Mal Sweet broke the best. All the sweat dripping on him and the flush on his face. He was boss with them and never frightened. Dad wasn’t even frightened in the war. Not even with the Japs making him walk all that way through the jungle. Nah. Hates Japs, but. Mad stinking bastards Japs.
Sarah thought a Jap was a kind of animal, possibly with claws, lurking on jungle paths. Like Niggers. Nigger was a kind of water animal on account of catch a nigger by the toe. You catch him going up a creek, like a platypus. Like you can never catch a platypus. And Dad says you can never catch a nigger.
Mal still held the end of the lasso, with Johnno’s new mare on the other end. ‘Come on girl, easy, eeeeasy.’ Mal’s words were as warm as the sun on the bay mare. She tested him at the end of the rope, baring her broad teeth, cantering in and away from him. He stood steady, his hands facing up, with the rope slack. It had taken three days to get this far, she was difficult this one, randy. Johnno had backed her into the corral at the end of the paddock, reversing his red trailer right to the fence. That was the exciting bit, not all this slow talking and blowing kisses at the horse. When they let the trailer door open, it was like at the rodeo, with the horse rearing and spitting down the ramp and into the corral. Gettaway! Come near me and I’ll kill you with these hooves. This one had backed right up to the corral fence, shaking and with her eyes all white and rolling, but her teeth bared. It was the way Ruth looked, backed up against the wall sometimes, with Mal yelling over her. Come closer and I’ll kill I swear I will. She was only sixteen hands, Johnno’s mare. Johnno wouldn’t give her a name.
‘We’ll see what she’s like after Mal gets his leg over her before we name her heh heh. If anyone can ride her that bastard can.’
Two years before, driving to Gundegai, they had stopped at a rodeo. There was a sign saying, CHALLENGE BUCKING BOBBY BROWN: DARE TO RIDE THE WILD BRONCO. The bucking bronco didn’t have a name, it was too wild to have a name. Mal had lasted twelve minutes and fourteen seconds and won twenty dollars. They had driven the rest of the way to Gundegai singing ‘The Quartermaster’s Store’ and ‘The Dog Sat on Me Tucker Box’ in loud, laughing voices. Kari’s callipers had clinked like cymbals. ‘Where the dog’ (clink-clink), ‘sat on me tuckerbox’ (clink), ‘five miles from Gundegai’ (clinky-clink-clink). Mal had zigged and zagged across the road to make Kari and Sarah squeal and Ruth go ‘oh, Mal luvvaduck,’ and rub her hands on the back of his neck.
Johnno’s mare wasn’t even a bucking bronco and she was taking days to break. Sometimes Mal could do it, the whole thing, in two days. This one would be slow. After Mal swung the lasso in a beautiful singing circle over her neck, he had let her run with the lasso trailing on the ground. Mal had stood in the paddock, let her run from him and slowly, slowly, slowly, lifted the end of the rope in his hands. Just stood there, like that, with the rope in his hands, a bridle at his feet, and the horse bolting about. He didn’t pull it tight though, the rope, just let it hang easy on the mare’s neck. Mal talked all the time, way down in his throat, his eyes looking right at the horse eyes, little words and sounds and cluckings coming from his mouth. Clucking and clucking. Being kind, so kind, and soft. Her ears started to stand up again, her lips closed in over her teeth, her breathing gentled up. She watched him.
Mal let one hand slide away from the rope, careful, careful. He moved like thick honey, slow, slow, slow. He kept his eyes on the mare’s, he breathed in and out, in and out, so deep she could hear him. In and out, in and out. They were both still. Mal breathed. The mare breathed. In and out. Like quiet wind. Mal dropped his hand – slowly, slowly – away, further away. Whispered and clucked at the mare again, as he reached down to his feet, bending at his knees, his eyes still on her. ‘Easy girl, eeeeeasy.’ She was easy, watching him bend, hearing him whisper and breathe. Safe. Mal’s hand rested on the bridle, his knees bent, his eyes on the mare. Sarah, sitting still as wood on the fence, counted inside her head one cat and dog two cat and dog three cat and dog to forty-seven cat and dogs, before Mal’s sun-spotted hand eased around the leather strap.
He came up straight and slow, the bridle hanging from his hands. ‘Shh girl, ssh my love.’ Mal saw nothing now, except the mare, her chest shining with sweat, her nostrils going small and big, small and big. ‘That’s it, thaaaat’s the way,’ he opened the fist holding the rope, let his palms face skywards. The rope dangled over his hand, unheld. The mare raised her head, dropped it again. Sarah breathed only through her nostrils, keeping her stomach muscles still. Johnno’s hand gripped the rail next to her. ‘That’s it, thaaaat’s it.’ Mal was crooning to the horse. It was a song, coming softly from the belly of him. Sarah’s mouth was open. Watching him, her father. Her father watching the horse. His hand half closed around the rope, so that three fingers touched it, but lightly. The mare’s ears twitched. Mal stood. The horse stood. Sarah sat. Johnno burped.
The mare’s mane flicked from her eyes as her head jerked up and around towards Johnno on the fence. Mal let a long slow breath out, through his nose. ‘Carn girl, carn love, that’s it. thaaaat’s the way.’ The mare’s head turned back to him. ‘Shh, s’okay.’ The bridle strap rested in the dust. Mal waited. Breathed. Sarah could hear the sounds of trees, grass, dust in the air, people on the moon. Ssshhh. Mal lifted his hands a fraction, just enough to lift the bridle from the ground. He stood a moment, then rolled his weight forward, towards the horse. Her tail flicked, then was still.
Mal lifted his foot, held the rope, whispered, moved his foot forward. Waited. Whispered. Watched. He moved forward another step, not stopping this time, but making each movement roll into the next, like music. Mal was an ancient dancer when he did this, his body somehow never stopping the inch forward, but never moving. He was like cloud, changing and changing, still and moving. Sarah’s insides trembled with this, with being invited into this dance, oh, so so gentle, so slow, so sweet. This was magic, make no mistake.
Mal was closer now, his arms, his legs, his arms, his back, all one song. His voice singing to her, his beauty, his one. The mare’s neck lowered, her eyes drooped. He was so close now, his breath skimming her cheek, soft and dancing. His hand was smooth in its moving, both still and moving his honey hand, touching her mane, resting like breath on her mane, his song falling from him like tissue-whisper, his hand sliding liquid down her neck, oh, around and the strap slipping on, and the metal just slipping in, just slipping like a tongue, you wouldn’t know, wouldn’t dream, wouldn’t dare. She felt the bridle, felt the oddness of straps about her head and face, the metal in her mouth, between her teeth. Spit. Spit it out. Her head pulled back and to the side, her eyes rolling back. Mal took three steps back, silent while the horse battled the bridle and bit. He left his palms open, facing her. ‘Good girl, let it out, that’s my girl, that’s the girl.’ He leant towards her, palms open, breath slow. Her head grew still, then flashed towards him, teeth bared, snapping them together. ‘Bitch,’ but he caught it in time and made that sound slow as well. They watched each other, eyes sparking. Then Mal stepped back, bent himself, and climbed through the paddock fence.
Outside the paddock he lifted a hessian sack full of chaff and bran onto his shoulders. Chaff dribbled out onto his wet blue singlet. He walked away from the horse to a cement trough at the far side of the fence and poured the food in. Sarah wanted to put her hands in the trough, for the bran to trickle through her fingers and the smell to clog her up. Mal left the empty sack near the trough, walked back to Johnno, said ‘Make a friggin noise like that burp again and yer out on yer ear, I don’t care if she’s yours, she’s my bloody breed. I’ll be on her tomorrow, no thanks to you, ya miserable old bastard, give Davo a call ey? He’ll wanna see, and Macka. How bout a bloody beer.’
Sarah held her breath until both the men had gone.